Recent reviews by alveolate

bad balancing, slow updates, weak UI.

worst of all, touchy discord mods.

there are better ones in the genre, this isn't worth the price.

one-man dev who is constantly responding in discord? that alone already makes the game worth it!

but on top of that, you're already getting:
- 69 weapons (noice)
- 20++ turrets
- 4 game modes
- metric ton of achievements
...and the game is still far from finished!

replayability is very darn near infinite, difficulty ranges all the way from easy peasy to swear at RNG. probably one of the best roguelite shooters in development right now.

while i still have some issues with the game's cluttered UI and some clunky graphical issues (like using weibo memes lul), the game still has some of the best combinations of vampire survivor style mechanics.

its core gameplay is basically Rogue Genesia + Soulstone Survivors. genesia map and a ton of cards (now artifacts) + soulstone weapons / abilities / synergies.

however, the titular Artifacts are way more interesting than the genesia cards. these Artifacts come with affixes that can be rerolled and therefore customised. it is this one single concept that gives the end-game almost endless replayability, as you could spend forever minmaxing your artifacts to make your perfect build for some specific speedrun.

the game simply has quite a lot of potential for further development, but what truly takes the cake is how fervently responsive the dev team is. despite being a small 3-man team of chinese-speakers, they've been replying daily on discord and pumping out updates every other day.

as an ardent survivor game enjoyer, the longevity of a game always boils down to how devoted the devs are and how frequently they update -- as long as they don't burn themselves out. a slowly growing community supporting the devs would definitely help, and you can check out the discord first for a preview.

just the worst way to start: ♥♥♥♥♥♥ starting weapon, low scaling power, rewards take forever to even unlock one upgrade... why make a game that demands a grind right from the start?? when there are hundreds of VS clones out there, many which are ALSO free??

only play if you're a masochist and enjoy having to grind the same pixel stage 20x for one measly upgrade.

just a really frustrating 20MTD clone with less-fun mechanics, worse reliance on lucky rolls, and lower quality pixel graphics with awful colour choices (high contrast sprites yet they keep blending into background cos of poor colour choices).

unlocks are mediocre and don't feel rewarding enough for how difficult the game is; yet you also start to notice just how ridiculously underpowered the starting characters are once you unlock some of the later characters. it's a miracle anyone even bothered to play after ember.

interesting concept; but gameplay is excruciatingly annoying. aside from the forced auto-targeting which everyone has complained about, the game is also actually rogue-lite - your character REALLY dies permanently if you die out there. which turbo sucks if you didn't know about it and your highest level char dies.

ultimately the decent setting and art doesn't compensate for the frustrating gameplay imo.

do you even tato, bro?

hands down (all 6 of em) the best roguelite game. it's a true roguelite as well - no cheesy upgrades/stats screen to bolster your lack of skillz. dodge the alien bullets, noob. all you get to unlock are new items/weapons that have a chance to show up in shop per run.

decorate your potato with some of the best art evah, i'm sure that extra nose or eye will help you win some runs.

i wanted to like this game. i spent 80 hours in 2 weeks trying to minmax grinding in the hopes of getting somewhere in the game when things suck less.

it did not happen. instead, i got to this quest where i had to make 3x Peasant Puls + 3x Shepherd's Puls to give to Mars as a sacrifice. those foods took me nearly 2 days to make because of all the new buildings i needed to produce new bs. after i submitted the items and had the cave on a 1h timer to unlock... the next day the entire quest reset. for no reason at all.

i've tolerated 2 weeks of abuse from this game, setting my own timers to track all the trap cooldowns, the hunter/logging cooldowns, the tax, the dice game, my 3 workers queues, even the colosseum resets... all because the game does not have a convenient window to see all these timers at a glance - you HAVE to run around the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ map if you didn't note down when you started a cooldown timer. what kind of incompetent time management game does that to the players??

not to mention, you don't get a minimap or world map or autowalk, so you gotta mouse everything every time you need to run out and check something. it's THE WORST.

meanwhile, the energy has a tiny, tiny cap of 100, which recharges at 10 per 20mins, and so far there seems no way to increase the max cap. this means that if you don't want to waste free energy, you have to check in every 3h20m minimum, and if you sleep 8 hours a day, you miss 4h40m of free energy, aka 200e.

but that's not all! the energy consumption in this game is RIDICULOUS. the cheapest thing to do, chop wood, costs 1 energy per swing, 3 swings to fell one tree, which gives you 1 wood. 3e = 1 wood. doesn't sound too bad right? that's the CHEAPEST energy cost. what if your gear breaks and you need to repair them? well that's 2 swings @ 3e = 6e. PER ITEM. and once you upgrade to slightly better items, you need to have an additional item per repair, which costs another 6e to obtain by disassembling. so that's... 12e per item. and they break VERY often, at least once a day, EACH.

but there must be fun things to do, right? nope. it's just very boring story quests that require you to do the same run around grab resources build something. once in a while, you have to kill some mobs, or even a "boss" type thing. no big deal, slightly challenging maybe? yea, cos you gotta repair that ♥♥♥♥. i've played 2 weeks and i still haven't unlocked the next tier (etruscan) gear because of just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the energy system is. and because i can't get better gear, i'm stuck in this low durability, more hits to kill each thing cycle of grind.

i am convinced that this game DOES NOT want you to play it. all it wants is giga turbo whales who would blindly buy all of the energy for brainless reasons and cash out quick. there is no reason for any game to disrespect and actively hate its players THIS much. it's sociopathic.

avoid at all costs.

feels a lot like 20 mins till dawn!

too counter-intuitive, both in terms of game UI and progression structure. just at my 2nd prestige and i don't even know what i should be doing any more. it feels like anything you do could either be wrong or just be more of the exact same. why would you make progression so cryptic? why does a player have to risk days of progress with a prestige just to learn if they chose correctly?

not to mention how half the game is just toggling around different pages looking for stuff to upgrade, and the upgrades are all exactly the same boring stuff.

there is simply not enough to hook a player into going deeper.